A Medical Journalist Insider

Kay Miller Temple

By Marv Leier on
May 14, 2018May 17, 2018

Kay Miller Temple

Dr. Kay Miller Temple is not your typical web writer
for the Center for Rural Health (CRH) at the University
of North Dakota School of
Medicine & Health Sciences (UND SMHS). Like her
colleagues, Miller Temple writes and edits web-based
articles for the Rural Health
Information Hub (RHIhub), but the journey she took to
becoming a rural health journalist is very different than
the path taken by the other health writers at the CRH.

After more than 30 years as a practicing physician,
Miller Temple decided to pursue a degree in journalism.
Why would someone trade in a stethoscope for a pen?
Miller Temple says it wasn't an impulse decision. She
sought out career coaching to make sure she had a
reasonable perspective on such a dramatic change.

I recognized that if I wanted to write for the public, I
had to have credibility.

"No one could escape the very obvious fact I was a
non-traditional student," Miller Temple said. "I
recognized that if I wanted to write for the public, I
had to have credibility."

Miller Temple grew up on a farm near Cresbard, South
Dakota, population 103. Like the others in her
family, Miller Temple loved to read. She also enjoyed the
vastness and the freedom of growing up in a rural area.
On the family farm, she learned the value of hard work.
She was responsible for the family garden and also helped
around the farm by driving truck during harvest and
helped with putting up hay.

"My brother still farms the original homestead ground,"
she said. "I go back a lot. It's my favorite place."

Miller Temple studied biology at Augustana College in Sioux
Falls, South Dakota. After graduation, she was accepted
into the University of South Dakota School of Medicine
where she studied with the hope of becoming a family
doctor in a rural area. While doing her medical school
rotations, she realized she wasn't very fond of
delivering babies or doing minor surgical procedures.
Fortunately, there was a new specialty program at the
Veterans Affairs
(VA) Medical Center and the Maricopa Medical Center in
Arizona that combined internal medicine and pediatrics.
It seemed to be a perfect fit for her.

"It was great to have been their first resident, in one
of the first med-peds residencies in the country," Miller
Temple said. "I had terrific training."

Miller Temple worked as an internist with
Mayo's Arizona campus. It was supposed to be a
one-year commitment, but she ended up staying for 15
years. She said being a member of the Mayo organization's
care delivery team was a memorable experience. She later
became the chair of the utilization management (UM)
committee, where she studied rules and regulations and
translated them to her colleagues and other healthcare
professionals. As the UM chair, she often wrote about
healthcare instead of doing healthcare. She said she
enjoyed the position, especially the writing, teaching,
and speaking that work involved, but she knew that
eventually she would have to rotate out of that role. As
she contemplated the transition to the next chapter in
her life, she decided to combine her background in
medicine and her love of writing into a hybrid career.

Arizona State University had the Cronkite journalism
school with a medical student master's path, so the
concept of a physician journalism student wasn't too much
of a stretch.

"Arizona State University had the Cronkite journalism
school with a medical student master's path, so the
concept of a physician journalism student wasn't too much
of a stretch," Miller Temple said.

Miller Temple said her husband and her medical colleagues
were supportive of her aspiration to become a journalist,
but her family was uncertain as to why she would want to
become a writer. They have since become fans.

"They like to read and share what I write now," Miller
Temple said. "And they realize that I'm still a doctor,
just a doctor who happens to write."

Kay Miller Temple and Kristine Sande

After Miller Temple finished her master's program, a job
in Grand Forks, North Dakota, at the RHIhub and CRH at
the UND SMHS caught her eye. She felt her journalism
skills and her experience as a physician in a rural
setting made her an "insider" for the position. RHIhub
Director Kristine
Sande also knew Miller Temple's credentials made her
a good, but unusual fit at the CRH.

"I was shocked to see the MD behind Kay's name on her
application," Sande said. "Honestly, her CV (curriculum
vitae) seemed too good to be true."

Sande says Miller Temple is a great addition to the
RHIhub team because of her clinical experience and
knowledge.

Our whole team benefits daily by being able to pick the
brain of someone with so much real-world expertise.

Jenn Lukens, Allee Mead, and Kay Miller Temple,
RHIhub's writing team

"Our whole team benefits daily by being able to pick the
brain of someone with so much real-world expertise,"
Sande said.

Miller Temple said it's been about a year since her last
shift as a healthcare provider, and although she doesn't
miss the day-to-day routine of formal care, she does see
some parallels with her current work.

"Primary care is whole person care, care that centers in
asking lots of questions and explaining lots of answers,"
Miller Temple said. "As a rural health writer, I'm still
asking questions and still explaining answers. I'm just
not sitting physically with patients and families."

Marv Leier
is the Communications Manager at the Center for Rural Health at the University of North Dakota (UND) School of Medicine & Health Sciences in Grand Forks.